When I was mayor of Charlotte, NC, I helped oversee development of a Complete Streets approach to transportation that included motorists, bicyclists, pedestrians, wheelchair users, transit passengers, and the businesses that lined the city’s streets. I also was mayor when the Charlotte Center City Partners launched Charlotte B-Cycle, the largest urban bike-sharing system in the Southeast.

Cities and towns across the country are taking steps to make biking an option for their residents, but we have a responsibility to make sure that it’s a safe option, too. Because, even though NHTSA reports national total crash fatalities at record lows, bicyclist and pedestrian deaths have not followed suit.

I didn’t tolerate it as mayor of Charlotte, and we certainly won’t stand still at DOT and allow this crisis to build up over time. As I told the enthusiastic bicycling advocates yesterday at the 2014 National Bike Summit, our roads should be safe; they should be easy places to travel, no matter how we’re traveling on them.